Christopher Nolan: studios must protect copyrights against AI training

Christopher Nolan, president of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) since fall 2025 and director of "The Odyssey", spoke about the next phase of AI protections on the "Hollywood Insiders" podcast on Saturday, according to TheWrap. He praised the DGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers for negotiating "excellent language and guardrails" on artificial intelligence in film and TV production.

Nolan said the guild is focused on holding studios to account for protecting their copyrights, but cannot do that itself. With very few exceptions, he said, directors do not hold the copyrights to the films they work on, so that responsibility falls to the studios.

He called "AI" too broad a catchall term and said companies use it to avoid responsibility. He said existing legislation already protects creators, and that he believes companies' reliance on fair use provisions will not hold up in court in the longer term, noting that there have already been some significant judgments against it.

Nolan said he was pleased that Universal included boilerplate language in the credits of "The Odyssey", for the first time, saying the film cannot be ingested or used as training data for generative AI models. He said the process will go through the courts and take a long time, and described the effort as a constant push toward litigation and legislation.

The podcast is hosted by producer and former Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Hawk Koch and produced by the Motion Picture & Television Fund.